The Capital Area Training Foundation (CATF) and the Ray Marshall Center have entered into a strategic partnership that will:

Provide valuable research on regional workforce and educational issues;

Offer program analyses and evaluations of CATF programs; and

Develop standards for objective research and evaluation of CATF programs.

The Construction Gateway Evaluation component of this partnership seeks to document results of the Gateway Program, identify practices/policies associated with positive results, and provide options for maintaining and expanding the initiative as well as exploring the possibility of replicating the model in other industry sectors. Moreover, the research feeds back into the larger objective of engaging civic interest and capacity in workforce development and career advancement, validating current investments, and influencing the public policy environment to promote more investment through the example of a “grounded” community program. The evaluation will be available Fall 2004.

Given the enhanced profile and prospects for a national three-digit accessed (2-1-1) network for health and human services information and referral (I&R), United Way of America has contracted with the Ray Marshall Center to estimate the net value to society created by public and private investments in the system. Researchers will quantify the observed benefits and costs associated with eleven fully operational state and local 2-1-1 programs as a basis for estimating the net value of a national system, should policymakers and legislators decide to support such a system.Researchers will employ established methodologies to estimate benefits and costs. Research tasks conducted between March and August 2004 included a review of the I&R and benefit/costs literatures; recruiting and preliminarily screening sites; formally requesting fiscal and operational data; site visits and interviews with program administrators and staff; and conversations with professionals and individuals across the general public who have used 2-1-1 to address their health and human service needs. An interim report is scheduled for September 2004, to be followed by a final report on October 2004.

Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York

Research Partners:

Rockefeller Institute of Government/The Research Foundation of State University of New York

Project Duration:

May 2002 – November 2004

Description:

Dr. Christopher T. King, director of the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources, is co-director of a two-year, eight-state study of service delivery under the federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998. The project is funded by a grant from USDOL/ETA with a specific objective of informing the Act’s federal reauthorization discussions in Congress next year. The study focuses on WIA and related workforce programs in Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, Oregon and Utah. Researchers will examine WIA governance, administration, planning and service delivery efforts at the state level and in two local workforce areas in each state. The research pays particular heed to the operation of the One-Stop job training centers, market mechanisms in workforce development, information technologies, and other aspects of service delivery associated with provisions of WIA.

Dr. Richard P. Nathan, director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York, Institute, is the Principal Investigator for the project. Dr. Burt Barnow, the associate director of the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University, is co-director of the research with Dr. King. This study evolved out of a 3-state pilot study of early WIA implementation conducted by Dr. King and Dan O’Shea of the Ray Marshall Center, entitled The Workforce Investment Act of 1998: Restructuring Workforce Development Initiatives in States and Localities, Rockefeller Report No. 12 (April 2001). As part of the field research network assembled for this study, Dan O’Shea will have primary responsibility for analyses of WIA and workforce systems in Michigan and Texas.

This project will evaluate the impact of enhanced services offered to selected Texas Fragile Families local sites on the following measures: consistent payment of child support, employment rates and earnings for non-custodial parents, and the use of TANF by custodial parents. Local sites offering the services to be evaluated include Austin, Laredo, San Angelo, and Baylor/Houston.

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices contracted with the Ray Marshall Center to gather information about the progress states have made in developing additional performance measures beyond those required by federally funded programs. Under the direction of RMC Director Christopher T. King and Neil Ridley of the NGA, RMC researchers Dan O’Shea and Sarah Looney identified 10 states for in-depth interviews regarding their progress in developing and implementing additional workforce performance measures. Findings from this research will be disseminated through profiles of each state and an overview report.

Ray Marshall Center researchers provided technical assistance to the Learning Network of the Work Skills/Life Skills: Preparing the Next Generation Initiative of the Hitachi Foundation. They participated in convenings of the Learning Network, prepared research and technical assistance briefs for dissemination, and provided focused assistance in developing effective business partnerships.

The Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources is working with the Workforce Leadership of Texas, a membership group comprised of local workforce Board chairs and executive directors, to develop, implement, and test improved performance measures for the Texas workforce development system. This work builds upon previous work the Ray Marshall Center has done in this area, including developing initial performance standards for national CETA programs in the late 1970s and early 1980s; implementing state and local performance standards for JTPA and other programs in the 1980s; examining and recommending cross-cutting performance measures for workforce programs nationally in the 1980s; and devising more systemic state workforce measures in the 1990s, including early work on return-on-investment and employer performance measures. The ongoing work is being conducted in two stages. During Phase I, researchers reviewed current workforce performance measures and proposed a series of new system outcome measures for implementation in workforce boards around the state. In Phase II of the project, researchers developed a Return-on-Investment model and ROI estimates for local workforce development boards.

Christopher King and Lee Holcombe will study the patterns and effectiveness of vocational/technical education participation in Texas in the 1990’s at both the secondary and postsecondary levels as mandated by the U.S. Dept. of Education as part of the National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE).

Researchers are conducting an evaluation of the “On the Right Track” project for the prevention of secondary conditions among children with disabilities. Evaluation activities judged the extent to which various project goals were being addressed.

Researchers at the Ray Marshall Center provided state analysis and annual updates regarding cash assistance, job training, Medicaid, and other social services in Texas. These reports combined with those of researchers in other states to produce national studies regarding the capacity of state government administrators and program operators to efficiently manage services in an era characterized by the devolution of increased responsibility for human services from the federal government to states and localities. The current analyses concerned recent changes in TANF cash assistance and work programs, which were followed by a study of the design and implementation of the Food Stamp program in Texas. The studies were conducted under the direction of Richard Nathan at SUNY-Albany through a field network of Rockefeller Institute Associates in selected states.